Kevin O'Donnell, Jr.Recensioni

Era un hombre ordinario, con una vida ordinaria y un futuro ordinario. Pero entonces ocurrió el accidente.
Y, veinte años más tarde, cuando despertó, era el cerebro núcleo del ordenador de una nave del tamaño de un planeta que conducía a 25.000 seres humanos a un viaje de mil años hacia las estrellas.
Primero se sintió confundido. Luego furioso. Luego, finalmente, aburrido.
Fue entonces cuando decidió jugar a ser Dios...

Love this series, must reread it soon.

In a genre crowded with stories about people with psionic abilities, O'Donnell came up with four books that seemed novel, fun and well-written.½

This series (never really finished) of four books is long out of print but worth picking up if you happen to encounter it.

I was sorry that this series didn't continue after this book. It was original and fun...and some of the sub-stories hadn't been resolved. I wonder what happened?½

Un buen ejercicio mental en los tiempos previos a internet, donde el autor se imagina la misma pero incluyendo interfaces mentales y teletransportación. Un mundo donde la contaminación hace que ya no sea posible salir a la calle y que la gente se comunique a travez de la gran red llamada ORA CLE.½

There are many many generation ship stories. This one is well written as a chronicle of how the Man whose brain was used to be the central control of a generation ship and the people who dwell inside him come to grow together.

a Human star nation and an implacable alien empire go to war with a General who is cloned and replicated to orchestrate Man's campaign. Except the general is a traditional Japanese Military man with a deep sense of Honor and Bushido who is ruthelessly used by the Powers that be.

ORA:CLE - Opinions, Research, Advice : Computer Linked Experts

It's 2188, high CO2 levels and attacks from Dacs, flying alien invaders, keep most people indoors. ALL80 AFAHSC NFF6 - Ale Elatey for short - works for ORA:CLE as a seeley (CLE) with expertise in East Asian history, and tends to his bonsai trees in his spare time. And with 3 near-fatal incidents in quick succession, it appears that someone is trying to kill him...

Written in 1983, but set over 200 years in the future, the world doesn't appear to have changed as much as you might expect - at least not from a 2008 viewpoint. The Dow Jones still exists, along with the dollar, and Ma Bell. People still have coffee, eggs, & OJ, for breakfast, and while phones (pholos) and TVs (hovee) appear to be holographic, goods are ordered online at a computer (with a keyboard interface & CRT) and delivered in a matter of minutes via a matter transceiver. Repair drones are operated remotely by their handlers, Seeleys like ALL80 have implants enabling them to commune with the Oracle, and spacecraft do exist - there are bases on the Moon & Jupiter at least - but the Dac are still pretty much a mystery.

I originally read this book shortly after it was first published and remember enjoying it at the time, but after 25 years in IT and a lot more scifi, I'm now much more aware of the flaws. Still enjoyable even so, but maybe setting it so far in the future was a bit ambitious.

Haven't read this book in many years, but I loved the hell out of it when I was in high school and college: a post-apocalyptic hardscrabble hell populated by rich, insulated sharpies and stunted and thuggish gang-bangers with an argot that seems to owe a fair bit to blaxploitation movies; a goodly smattering of the old ultraviolence and a fair smidge of the old inandout; psychic combat; and 12-foot-tall, telepathic, alien bears with some twisted sexual pathologies. What's not for a teenaged boy to like? The real wonder is that I've yet to read anything else that this guy has written.½